1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital mixer having a capability of assigning user's desired channels to operating elements, respectively, provided on an external panel to allow the user to set or change a value/values of a parameter/parameters of a channel/channels assigned to one of the operating elements by a manipulation of the operating element.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there have been digital mixers having physical operating elements such as faders and switches provided on an external panel (a mixing console). Some digital mixers are designed such that a console which is manipulated by a user is provided separately from a mixing engine which mixes input signals so that the console can be connected to the mixing engine with a cable. The other digital mixers are designed such that the console is integrated with the mixing engine. Whichever the digital mixer is, it is desired to save space necessary for the console in order to reduce the space required to install the digital mixer. In order to save the space, therefore, it is necessary to reduce the number of operating elements provided on the console. In recent years, however, because the number of channels processed on a digital mixer increases, it is of importance to handle a multiplicity of channels with a small number of operating elements. Particularly, efficiency, compactness and usability of the operating elements are desired for a digital mixer.
A prior art stated below discloses a digital mixer which has a plurality of channel strips each having operating elements such as a fader, a level meter and various buttons so that a user of the digital mixer can manipulate input channels that the user assigns to the channel strips, respectively. Schemes to assign the input channels to the channel strips include switching between layers (p. 45 of the prior art). By this scheme, the input channels of 48 channels, for example, are separated into the first layer of input channels 1 to 24 and the second layer of input channels 25 to 48 to allow the user to switch between the layers by use of a certain switch so that the input channels 1 to 24 or the input channels 25 to 48 are assigned to 24 channel strips, respectively. In this scheme, one channel is assigned to each channel strip regardless of whether the layer is on the first layer or on the second layer. Furthermore, the digital mixer of the prior art has a fader-assigning capability of assigning user's desired input channels to eight faders, respectively (p. 212 of the prior art). In this case as well, the number of input channel assigned to each fader is one. Furthermore, the digital mixer of the prior art also has a capability of assigning a plurality of channels to a certain channel strip referred to as a DCA strip to allow the user to control the assigned channels together by manipulating the channel strip (p. 81 of the prior art).
Prior Art: DIGITAL MIXING CONSOLE PM5D/PM5D-RH V2, DIGITAL MIXING SYSTEM DSP5D User's Manual, 2004, Yamaha Corporation